


Interscintillance

by The Rose Mistress (Semilune)



Series: Hear, Feel, Think [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, Accidental Voyeurism, Adorable, Adorkable, Aggressive Sadness, Be Careful What You Wish For, Bittersweet, Cute, Daydreaming, Dreamsharing, Emotional, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, Exarch is happy to help, F/M, Falling In Love, Feelings, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Flashbacks, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Forgive Me, Forgiveness, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Heartache, Hugs, Hurts So Good, I don't know what to tag this anymore, I have no self control, I'm Going to Hell, Invasion of Privacy, Light Dom/sub, Memories, Nostalgia, Oh My God, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Pining, Puppy Love, Repressed Memories, Secret Crush, Secrets, Sexual Fantasy, Size Difference kind of, Small Dom kind of???, Spoilers, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Understanding, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Emotional Tension, What Have I Done, Why Did I Write This?, WoL is Tall and Exarch is Small(er), WoL is a mess, chapter 6 is explicit, gratuitous references to in-game quotes, hi I'm in hell now, i cried a little, lots of feelings, might make you cry, the one that got away, very brief platonic? kissing, when you love a friend but are afraid to tell them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-06-27 03:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semilune/pseuds/The%20Rose%20Mistress
Summary: ✦ SPOILERS!  Extreme BIG Shadowbringers spoiler warning.  Please do not read unless finished with MSQ, up-to-date on patch (5.0).  Exploring merit, heartache, and timing, directly after the events of Shadowbringers.  Chapters are kind of mini oneshot/drabbles but also chronologically connected?  Rating changed to account for warm fluff.Adult (18+) writing!  Rating changed again for the Exarch's explicit daydream in chapter six, "Fracture."  I am so sorry.  I'm in hell.☽ ✧ ☾"Yet when you speak to me as the young man I once was, he cannot help but stir within."





	1. Foreword & Table of Contents

**Author's Note:**

> inter-  
> /ˈin(t)ər/
> 
> prefix: between; among.
> 
> ✧
> 
> scin·til·lat·ing  
> /ˈsin(t)lˌādiNG/
> 
> adjective: sparkling or shining brightly.
> 
> ✧
> 
> scin·til·lance  
> /ˈsintᵊlən(t)s/
> 
> noun: a scintillant condition.

* * *

☽ **Foreword** ☾

Mainly an excuse to explore some post-Shadowbringers feelings. I couldn't rest without writing this—and now I've descended to hell. Essentially a continuation of my WoL examination, which started in "Astral Fire, Umbral Heart." 

This is kind of turning into G'raha's story, but still orbits around matters of friendship and the heart. A lot of painful pining.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

* * *

☙ **Table of Contents** ❧

* * *

  1. **Foreword & Table of Contents  
**
  2. **Double Star**  
The Warrior of Light and the Crystal Exarch share a moment in private after the credits.  
Mixed POV, Warrior of Light with a touch of G'raha.
  3. **Event Horizon**  
"We are living creatures," he said gently. "Each of us doomed—perhaps blessed—with a finite existence. Thus, do we long for perpetuity—a sense of permanence to endure. Love and friendship, tender legacies. It is fundamental instinct, manifest."  
G'raha POV.
  4. **Disremember**  
She was terribly good at dreaming, after all.  
Warrior of Light POV. The Warrior of Light has a dream that she forgets. 
  5. **Omnifacet**  
There are so many sides to things.  
G'raha POV. Flashbacks of falling in love with the Warrior of Light.
  6. **Fracture**  
_WARNING: Explicit sexual content in the form of a daydream._  
There, staring at the Tower where it cut through the haze of Mor Dhona, he confessed his earnest fears, the answers he hunted of his inheritance—revealed the bearing they held on his destiny, and his deepest, darkest instincts. Half of them, at least.  
G'raha POV. For a man of his age, this was incredibly unbecoming.



* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I put it on [tumblr](https://lumikatdraws.tumblr.com/post/186223232363/me-i-cant-possibly-love-a-character-more-than):
> 
>  **Me:** I can’t possibly love a character more than Aymeric, he was FFXIV at its peak, perfect, a pure paragon  
>  **The Crystal Exarch:** _exists_  
>  **Me:** …  
>  **Me:** …  
>  **Me:** … when I’m wrong I say I’m wrong


	2. Double Star

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

The knock at her quarters was gentle, almost timid.

Only just finished with her perfunctory bath, she scrunched her damp hair in one hand. She was ready for bed; wore a long robe and nightdress. But whoever came to call on her—most likely a Scion—must know that well enough. She closed her dressing gown and moved to crack open the door. 

It was _not_ a Scion, but the Crystal Exarch.

His given name escaped her lips in quiet astonishment. “ _G’raha?_ ”

At the sound of it, something electric flashed and glittered through his serene countenance. He was still unveiled, his cowl forgotten behind his shoulders. His vivid scarlet eyes sparkled up at her. 

Why had he left the festivities? All around them, his Crystarium yet buzzed with celebration. After so much laughing and eating and crying and drinking, it was only the power of leaden exhaustion that stole _her_ away. 

Well. That, and a Leveilleur at each arm begging her to _sleep_.

Had the Exarch followed her?

For a beat, he inspected her face. Then he spoke in a very quiet voice, compelling, nonetheless. “Pardon me for the intrusion,” he began. “You have certainly earned a long rest. But I selfishly confess, I—wished for a moment alone with you tonight.”

Her heart slipped artfully into her throat. 

Since it was utterly unbidden there, she swallowed it quickly away.

“I’m afraid I’ve put on my nightclothes already,” she stammered. “But please,” she offered, cracking the door a bit more, her chest strangely tight. “You are more than welcome inside.”

“Ah.” His brow tensed, and canny eyes traced what little of her could be seen through the door. He lowered his gaze respectfully. “I beg you not to trouble with me if I interfere with your privacy—”

“Not at all,” she interrupted, throwing the door open wide. Between her long chemise and housecoat, she truly felt modest enough. She allowed a note of humor to her voice, her mind itching with an old and nearly forgotten memory. “My sense of propriety is what some have called _flexible_ —provided, of course, my company doesn’t mind.”

Sibylline as ever, the corner of his lips tilted with the start of a smile. His eyes shone in turn. “Not in the slightest,” he assured her. 

She stepped aside to allow him across the threshold. As he passed, he held her with his gaze. The way he studied her was affectionate, wholesome. But somehow—somehow it made her feel stripped to the core. 

“I admit,” he said, almost bashful. “It is rather refreshing to see you so _unadorned._ ”

She barked a shocked laugh, shrugged the sleeves of her robe a bit higher. “I could say the same to you.” She openly searched his familiar face, overwhelmed by a flood of relief. “It feels wonderful to finally meet your eyes again.”

He laughed and reddened very slightly. Still, he held her gaze. “That it does. I feel quite exposed in your presence now,” he admitted, his ears angling slightly with embarrassment. “Though it does not necessarily follow that the feeling is unpleasant.” He looked up at her through his lashes.

Her heart wrung again with that unsought-for feeling—the one she felt now whenever he was nearby. It was akin to yearning; something wistful and homesick, melancholic with nostalgia. Did she want to cry, or rake him into her arms? Did she want to kiss his brow, or merely squeeze him tight?

Regardless, she sealed the door behind him and followed his smaller frame across the floor. He took sure, steady footsteps; glanced over his shoulder to survey her. 

Her thoughts clouded. Her arms ached with the urge to reach out to him, and she cleared her throat. “Might I—”

He turned to look up at her with reserved anticipation. “Yes?”

 _Damn it all_.

He was wrapped in her arms before she could form another thought, before she could summon further words to her lips. The hug lifted his toes off the floor, and he gasped a laugh, gripping her firmly in answer. “I see,” he wheezed, breathless.

Hot tears prickled and streamed down her face. They moistened her cheek where it touched the skin and gemscale of his neck. How long had she sidestepped and feared and _wanted_ to touch him—to speak with him using that oldest and dearest of languages, physical contact?

As she held him there in her arms, eons passed in the span of an instant. 

He was warm. Solid. Small. Ever smaller than her. 

A precious, unexpected gift. 

“Thank you,” she said.

Finally, _gently_ , she eased him to the floor.

His arms lingered low around her back, tensing as though to prolong the embrace. “My old friend,” he muttered, sinking down onto his heels. “The gratitude is _mine_.”

Her heart drummed an uneven rhythm. She took a step back and stared down at him, wiping her eyes. Then, slowly, for reasons she couldn’t entirely describe, she sank to her knees at his feet.

“Let me thank you, G'raha,” she whispered, staring at his sandaled toes. “For fighting for our worlds. For believing _._ ”

* * *

Why she knelt there, he couldn’t be sure. 

All he knew was the dazed swell of tension in his chest. The pulse of his heart was wild and warm, winding him tight. His blood stung and stirred in his veins, pricking the powerful urge to touch her face.

His left hand, the hand that yet belonged to him, trembled. 

Somehow, his fingers brushed against her cheek.

She looked up at him. Her lashes were wet, her dark eyes glistening with tears. She lifted her hand to clasp the one that caressed her. He watched as her lips parted and found himself spellbound.

Why he began to lean in, he didn’t know. 

It was as though the worlds around and between them had vanished, leaving only the pressure of her palm on his skin. There was only the tender look on her mystified face—only the shape of this distant, cherished dream. 

Only the need to be nearer.

She froze as the space between them dwindled. He could taste her cautious exhalation, warm and humid, salty with tears. He felt her flinch at the brush of his mouth on her cheek, and his voice nearly failed him. 

Why he still wanted this, he couldn’t rightly say. 

He spoke the only words he could manage. “I believe I—want to—”

She took a faltering breath—finished where he cut off. “Kiss me?”

His brow knitted. The reply was less than a whisper. “Yes.”

She was still as a sculpture. “If that is what you wish.”

Both were petrified in time, separated only by a blink.

Then he tilted his chin to capture her lips with his.

* * *

She knelt on the floor as the Exarch bent to kiss her.

Warm. Soft. His lips were those of a creature made of flesh, just as she.

It was delicate, fleeting—a chaste and primordial gesture. The second hand that came to cup her face was smooth and faceted as only gemstones could be. She felt the strangest blend of cold and warmth from it. 

He broke the contact to breathe again, to step back and offer his scintillant palm. “Stand with me,” he begged, a deep flush on his cheeks. “It feels very wrong to look down upon my redeemer.”

She shook her head and continued to kneel, her lips tingling from the kiss she scarcely believed even happened. “Let me linger like this,” she insisted, studying the tricolor folds of his robes, the hang and drape of them, the feet beneath. 

How was he the same person? Was he really, after all this time? 

She closed her eyes. 

“Let me be humbled before you," she said. "It was you who moved time and space. You who saved us.” She looked up at him again; met tense scarlet eyes. “ _You_ are the redeemer.” A stoic smile tickled her lips. “I am merely lucky to be part of your future.”

There where he watched, the Exarch shuddered, the crystal of his hand glittering as it flexed. Then he, too, knelt on the floor. “Samantha.” When he spoke her name, it sounded like a vow. “It is I who was lucky, to be part of _your_ past.”

Mist blurred her eyes again and she hung her head. 

Her hot tears dripped to speckle the skirts pooled at her knees. Gently, almost shyly, the Exarch’s arms reached to enfold her again. The warmth of the face he leaned near her chest was almost too heavy for her brittle heart to bear. 

“Emet-Selch’s darkness cleansed me of Light,” she croaked, pressing her cheek against the crown of his head. She felt his soft ears slant to pin back. “But I still feel so lost. So shattered.”

What drove her to declare this—to him of all people?

But the grip of his arms only tightened. “I understand,” he said kindly, his voice very quiet. “Truly, I do.”

And she believed him, with every scrap of her being.

Maybe that was why she told him, because she was suddenly sure he _did_ understand. 

For what was he, G’raha Tia, the Crystal Exarch, but another broken soul—another fragment of stardust somehow splintered from the Source? Stranded here, tethered to the Tower; he’d shouldered the fate of a doomed and dying Eorzea, now the weight of two fragile worlds.

It was a burden she now shared.

Her arms hooked around him like a vise and she sobbed in earnest, pressing him close. He sank into the embrace. “Do not think yourself alone,” he whispered, sounding much like her old friend. She could feel the subtle heat of his breath. “ _Never_ think it.”

So many oaths like this to carry. So many she would never dare to break.

She hugged him tight. “And you,” she said, reaching for words very precious. He, of all people, deserved them. “As long as I live, you will never be alone.”

For several ticks, the two of them knelt, linked by the cage of their arms. His breathing was soft, hers still ragged, evening out. Finally, he shifted, pressed one ear to her chest and chuckled. Relief warmed his voice. “The sound of your heartbeat profoundly reassures me.”

She gasped a laugh. “Proof of my promise?”

He nodded. "As long as you live." Then he fell very still. 

For another long breath, he leaned there against her, listening. 

When he finally tilted away, she sank back to sit on her heels. He watched her move with the strangest blend of unease and satisfaction, another incomprehensible grin on his lips.

Her voice returned to her quite suddenly. “Why did you come here?” A rush of humiliation followed. “Surely it wasn’t to be pulled into my slobbering embrace.”

His answering chuckle was breathy. “Chiefly to thank you again,” he provided. “And no, that was a most welcome addition.” He paused. “I apologize for my own unsolicited attentions.”

She grinned in irony at the thought and felt shame creep to her cheeks. “I use physical touch more capably than words,” she admitted, feeling very sympathetic. “What you did—” She met his eyes. His face was flushed. “Made me think you must feel very strongly.”

He pressed his full lips together, his scarlet gaze steady—but his ears belied his emotions, moving slightly. “In truth, I am well beyond words,” he confessed. “That this end has come to pass; that you are still with us.” He paused. The look in his eyes struck the bottom of her heart. “You remembered me,” he murmured. “That stirs me deepest of all.”

“Of course I—”

_Remember._

_Remember us._

Her heart plummeted down. Pain lanced through her aching chest.

_Remember … that we once lived._

Tears brimmed to burn in her eyes again. She crushed her face into her palms and wept.

 _Emet-Selch._ She gasped.

_I will never forget._

A dumbfounded Exarch was folding her back in his arms, but broken sobs kept spilling from her lips. Everything hurt. She felt like she was breaking apart, like she was bursting at the seams with Lightwardens again.

She rattled like a cracked and emptied vessel. “I saved you and so many others.” She dragged her eyes up to stare into G’raha’s calm, forgiving face. “I _know_ it was for the best,” she rasped. “So then how can it feel so _foul?_ Why do I hate myself—for taking his life?”

The Exarch’s expression was strained. He searched her eyes and seemed to piece together the nuance of her words, to pick and parcel his response. “Emet-Selch was tortured,” he said gently, a ration of grief in his voice. “Rendered blind by his torment, he was consumed by it. He thought only of all he had lost—and the ends he sought would usher more anguish.” He gripped her shoulders; fixed her with a stare that burned straight to her soul. “Do not think in rights or wrongs. Think on those you have saved. Listen to me, and know how very cherished, how _worthy_ you are.”

She wiped the tears from her cheeks and caught her quavering breath. “Then, in trying times,” she recited. “They will raise their voices to remind you of the difference you have made.”

He looked so solemn, so honored. “Thus,” he finished. “Your deeds come to affirm your path.”

_Remember this._

He was so wise. 

She leaned gently against his small, sturdy frame, consoled by the pressure of his touch. One final truth spilled darkly from her lips. “I didn’t want to end him.” Her voice was thin. Weak. “I wanted to save _you_ —and our worlds. But I wanted to save him, too.” She swallowed hard. Her mouth tasted bitter. “Emet-Selch—he—” She swallowed again. “He never deserved to die.”

The Crystal Exarch pressed his cheek to hers. She could feel the soft twitch of an ear, warm and velvet. “Not one of us deserves such a fate,” he agreed, his voice low and soothing. “But after suffering for so many lifetimes …” He took a halted breath. “Let us hope that now, he might find some measure of rest.”

She held him in her arms for another unending moment and shuddered without sound. In part, she mourned and doubted for the future of them all. How long would _his_ soul be tied, locked here with the Tower? A hundred more lifetimes? Millennia of his own? And what would become of the Scions—of Eorzea, after all? “We are changed,” she rasped. “All of us.”

_Was it for better, or for worse?_

He fell very silent. His arms, however, gripped her more tightly. “Change is inescapable.” She felt his breath on her neck. “But with any luck, we might wield that change for something good.”

“Yes,” she whispered. And then again, she echoed his words. “I’m sorry. It is wrong of me to unburden myself like this.”

“Use me as you will,” he said quickly, firmly, his arms tensing around her. “Let me oblige you, if only for this moment.”

Another sob threatened at the back of her throat and she quelled it. “No,” she croaked, jerking out of his embrace. She stared into stunned scarlet eyes. “I am sick of people believing themselves my debtors.” 

A wave of nausea overtook her as she thought back on those left behind on the Source, all the threads still unraveled—how much time might have passed since she left. “You must let me help you feel better,” he was insisting, the Exarch’s soft plea interrupting her thoughts.

She shook her head and began to struggle to her feet, holding a hand to him. “Come sit with me, then,” she said, still hoarse. “Before you came, I was making—” She blinked, suddenly unsure. “ _Do_ you eat or drink?”

Glittering fingers laced with hers and he rose to stand with her. His palm felt solid, heavy—cool and smooth, imbued with inner life. It was almost like a flame burned far within, the warmth just beyond the reach of her senses. “I _can_ ,” he said, a glimmer of humor in his voice. 

She lifted her eyebrows and met laughing scarlet eyes. “Would you like some tea?”

He smiled. “My blood fairly sings with anticipation.”

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *


	3. Event Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We are living creatures," he said gently. "Each of us doomed—perhaps blessed—with a finite existence. Thus, do we long for perpetuity—a sense of permanence to endure. Love and friendship, tender legacies. It is fundamental instinct, manifest.”

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

_“Ishgardian_ tea?”

Sitting there at the table, the sound of his own voice surprised him, somehow altered—imbued with an unfamiliar, or perhaps forgotten, quality. Youthfulness? _Exuberance?_

She nodded. “Norvrandt offers slightly different ingredients, of course,” she said, stirring her own steaming cup. “But I tried to make it close.”

It smelled of cream and citrus and honey—very fragrant. He watched her take a sip, her dark eyes trained on his face, and the cobwebs in his mind stirred and parted. Coerthas. Ishgard. Dravania. The sites of the dreadful Dragonsong War, related in the memoirs of the Count. “I understand you spent a great deal of time there,” he said gently, curiously.

Slowly, she raised her eyebrows. 

Perhaps he was _too_ curious about this.

She took another long sip of her tea and swallowed, a wisp of damp hair drying up in a cowlick. _'Endearing'_ was not a word he would readily use to describe her, past or present—but in this moment, she was exactly that. “I have family there,” she informed him, quite simply. “But you must have been aware of that already.”

He laughed quietly, looked down at his milky tea. “Yes. The House Fortemps,” he stated. “Your keepers. And perhaps—there is another?”

Her expression changed, almost imperceptibly; the thrice-tempered steel in her eyes melted with something like disbelief. “Was there something—else—history remembered?”

She never spoke of it, not in Norvrandt. Not to him. 

Perhaps she felt too far, too fearful of fate.

He hardly blamed her. Her soul quite nearly ceased to exist.

“It was a history I chanced upon by accident,” he said, and wondered if the shift in her eyes reflected a plummeting heart. “But as you well understand,” he tried to recover, “The gaze of time is wont to distort the truth.”

 _The lock split open beneath his trembling fingers, leaving smears of rust. He pried the drawer open, tasted stale air; the flavor of earth and recollection and old, forgotten books. There was a bundle of brittle envelopes tucked inside. Faded, crumbling letters_ —

Guilt gnawed at his stomach. Maybe it was the tea, unaccustomed as he was to drinking it. But what reason was there to be guilty? It was such a distant, desperate act; the pursuit of any last glimmer of _her_ , however insignificant. 

She gave him a stiff but accepting smile. Her eyes still bore traces of the tears so recently shed, while they knelt on the floor there together. “What did you see?”

The Exarch took a breath.

_Timeworn and faded, half impossible to discern. In places he deciphered a neat and elegant script, gently calligraphic. “My Fire, my Light—” “—enthralled. I lack the means to tell you how cherished—” “I am well, I am well—but this wanting will lead me to perish—”_

_Scraps tucked in the corners with a scrawl less refined, but words just as earnest. “My Knight Most Blessed—” “—break my shackles or bend them, but duty calls. Look for my next—” “—write? I love you. I love you; I love you, I—”_

The truth he summoned to his lips felt like hot iron, but there was nothing to be done. He had to say it. 

“Your letters,” he admitted. “ _His_ letters.”

Her shoulders went rigid. He could see a muscle flutter in her brow, and her face began to warp with raw betrayal—but she quickly pressed her quivering lips together and swallowed.

“I sought any means to find you again,” he muttered, holding her stare, aching at the look on her face. “Any means of connection. Your room at the Fortemps manor was largely untouched. I presumed any insights therein to be invaluable.”

The hurt in her eyes was primal, tangled up with silent accusation. “I suppose I was dead,” she said. Her voice was sharp. She cleared her throat. “It’s hardly unusual to pore over the life of a dead person.”

It wasn’t quite hatred in her eyes. It pierced him to the core all the same. “I am _so_ sorry, Samantha,” he breathed. “I know how many lines I crossed to reach you—ley and otherwise.” His eyes flicked away from the adjudication of her face. “I never expected you to forgive me.”

“No,” she agreed. “You expected to die instead—” 

Her voice cracked and caught in her throat and he dared to look up again. 

Tears were creeping down her face. She was _seething_. “How _dare_ you,” she hissed, and before he could tease out her meaning, her lips parted in a sob. “You planned to _die_ without telling me—to whom I owed my life?” Her rebuke was gruff and grating. Now her eyes burned with loathing, unmistakable—not for his crossing of lines, but for that unfulfilled sacrifice.

 _By the Lifestream itself._

His heart would be split in twain, and he _deserved it._

When he spoke, there was gravel in his voice. “Would that you knew my contrition,” he murmured. “Would that I could offer myself to your Echo to show, beyond doubt, my every repentance.” He closed his eyes.

He craved this reproach. Even after a lifetime of preparation, he had been thoughtless, _impudent_ to assume he could escape her searing eyes unscathed.

“Find the method, then, and tell me,” she said. “I would love to pry inside your mind.”

“Gladly,” he promised, looking up at her again. “Though it was yours to explore already.”

A silence fell between them then, as she settled herself and took a breath. Something flashed through her expression. It reminded him of starlit Mor Dhonan nights. “There are so many questions I would ask you,” she muttered. In the depths of her stare he caught the fringe of something vast and howling—an abyss that slipped back into hiding as soon as he’d glimpsed it. Then she looked away from him.

His flight of thought fluttered in response, wry and reaching.

 _Old man_. Solemn and patient, waiting, waiting, and _waiting_.

Even in the wake of her censure, perhaps stronger for it, a thrill ticked and prickled down his spine. The G’raha within and the Exarch without stirred to combine—abruptly awakened, together. Vigor tempted him to try for what he wanted, to _risk it_. For once, the back of his mind seemed to whisper: _Consequences be damned_.

Was that why he had kissed her—when he knew very well her heart was in the Source?

He itched again with the need to connect, to gratify. “Ask,” he said. It came out like a plea. “Let me be at your disposal—”

He could see her start to scowl and object. “Apologies, I will accept. But you owe me nothing else.”

“Not for the repayment of debts, then,” he accepted. He stared into her eyes. _Real or imagined._

Her scowl deepened. “I don’t trust you.”

He smiled like a fox caught in the henhouse—a rueful grin in reflex. “That is fair.”

For a moment, she searched his face. Then she downed the rest of her tea in a mouthful. He could almost see memories wrinkle behind her eyes as she swallowed hard and set her cup back in its saucer. “How can it have been _hundreds of years_ and still you wear that same godsdamned _grin?”_

He laughed at that. “Is it the same?”

Her eyes were raw as she nodded, with something barely unbound. “Am I the same as you remember?”

_Ah._

Dare he reach that far back, through the catacombs of his awareness, to the vault in which he kept her? Most times he was afraid to open it, to unfold those precious memories, for fear of creasing them or wearing them thin—fear that the caress of his mind might render them ragged, fading the smells and the colors.

Still, he closed his eyes and sank back through time.

_Blinding blue sky and dappled shadows—the taste of fresh water and flowers. Urth’s Gift. A tall figure bent and twisted from the brook, searching fiercely for the source of his voice. “Show yourself,” she demanded, fire in her eyes. He could feel himself grin as he surveyed her. Stern, severe, and spirited. Yes. She would do._

He opened his eyes and there she was—still squinting at him. “The selfsame face and expression,” he told her, not bothering to wipe the grin from his own. “Still scoffing and scowling at my antics.”

His words brought a glint to her eye—the half-reluctant preview of a smile. “Old habits must die hard,” she said, nostalgia ghosting through her face.

Then she chuckled, rattling the cage he kept around his recollections. 

He wanted to make her _laugh_ back then—to chase her and taunt her—curve the stiffness of her mouth into a smile. He was young and full of whimsy, excitement curled low in his belly, his legs always ready to race. 

At least these old lips were still willing to banter.

When they first journeyed for the Tower, he came to understand. The set of her jaw was a consequence of focus. The firm and thoughtful silence, the way she tried to learn. She clothed herself in harshness to shoulder the burden inside her, to keep it from crushing her down. 

Another memory tore to the surface.

_The sun dipped on the horizon—the world around the Tower melted, glowing orange. There on the platform he watched her, his chest very full, his body electric with awe. “But I’m not a hero, G’raha,” she told him, her lips set in a grimace. “I’m merely one person who wants to make a difference.”_

_He searched her dark brown eyes, his heart set aflame. “I believe you just defined the very term.”_

_She only scoffed and looked at her hand—the folds and creases of her palm, her calloused and charred-again fingertips. “How can I be a hero when I have no idea what I’m doing?” She looked back at him. For not the first time, he saw the hint of something small and brittle there in her eyes._

_He wanted to reach for her—to take her hand—to pull her against him. But for the twelfth time, he held himself back, smiling instead. “Stand tall, my friend,” he said, stretching to his full height beside her, his pulse running faster. His brow barely reached past her shoulder, but beside her, somehow, he felt invincible. “Have heart.”_

_A grin touched her lips as she watched him—and a shiver inched down his spine as her hand touched his back._

He shivered in the present, too. _Yet you still refuse to see it._

She tilted her chin. “What?”

 _Oh_. He must have spoken aloud. His cheeks burned very slightly.

Dare he admit the root of his thoughts—his reason for guarding his memories?

“How much of a hero you are,” he said instead. _In every cleft of my heart._

She leaned her elbows on the table to prop her chin in her hands. He watched her lips quiver again as a fresh mist of tears sprang to her eyes, and every shred of him wished to hold her. “For all of my doubts,” she said, looking at the ceiling, “For all of the pain and the sorrow—tonight, I do feel heroic,” she confessed. Her eyes tilted back to his. “But my duty never ends, G’raha,” she said, barely a breath. “And the older I become, the more I wish—just for a moment—for something to keep to myself.” She looked at the table. “I think that’s why I regret Emet-Selch." A heavy sigh. "Somehow _—I understood him."_

The Exarch could feel his brow tense and wrinkle. “We are living creatures,” he said gently. “Each of us doomed—perhaps _blessed_ —with a finite existence. Thus, do we long for perpetuity—a sense of permanence to endure.” The memories he kept for that purpose swelled against the crushed velvet of his heart, and his ears pressed back. “Love and friendship, tender legacies,” he muttered. “The urge to carry on. It is fundamental instinct, manifest.”

Her eyes were hot enough to melt him, to render flesh from bone. “You feel the same,” she noted. “The selfless Exarch of the Tower—craving something of his own nonetheless.”

 _Something,_ indeed. Hysterical laughter, of all things, pressed at the back of his tongue. He tamed it with a chuckle. “Anything I—or I should say, _G’raha_ —wanted is well in the past,” he said, grinning gravely.

“How delightfully _vague_ ,” she taunted. “I presume you won’t tell me what _‘he’_ wanted?”

How much could be seen in his eyes? Surely it was apparent—the ardor cleaving through him, even after all this time—the wish that rushed to the tips of his fingers, making flesh and Tower tremble alike. “I did vow to answer your questions,” he murmured. “But that one might prove the exception.”

In the past, Samantha would think him a scoundrel—press him, ask him _why._

But in the future, burdened by light and truth and shadows, she only fixed him with her eyes.

His half-mortal chest seemed to tremor. He took a sip of cold milk tea.

“It’s been too long,” she sighed. “Since I spoke to G’raha like this.”

His heart rattled. “It has,” he agreed. “Let us try not to wait so long next time.”

And slowly, the stiffness of her mouth curved into a smile.

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *


	4. Disremember

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

It was probably a dream.

She was terribly good at dreaming, after all.

G’raha Tia’s smile was bright enough to rival Norvrandt’s everlasting light. “Come,” he said, and with a shock she felt his strong hand twine fully with hers, their fingers interlocking. He’d never done anything quite like that before. “I have something to show you.”

Were they somewhere in Mor Dhona? Perhaps. Shards of crystal glittered all around them, spilling rainbows into the summery sky. It reminded her of somewhere familiar, and her heart fluttered. “Where are you taking me?”

Laughter spilled from his lips and he looked back at her, a head’s height below. His left eye twinkled, teal as a broad ocean vista, the fringe of his fiery hair obscuring his right. “If I told you, that would ruin the surprise.”

She took a breath and braced herself, accustomed to his fanciful jests. “I suppose I’ll just have to trust you.”

Somehow, it was twilight. She struggled to keep pace with him. They stirred up pollen from the flowers. She smelled lilacs and sunlight and grassland—the balm of water in the distance. She stumbled past the swell of a hill, following the warmth of him. He almost seemed to glow.

There was a valley below them, all lavender and violet. “There,” he said, using the hand that didn’t drag her. “Look on the horizon.”

A tower of crystal pierced the clouds, blue and scintillant in the swelling sunset.

It took her breath away, to see it like this.

A blur filled her eyes. “I wondered what became of you,” she rasped. “And you were here all along, laboring to save us.”

He squeezed her hand; twisted to face her. “Yet I thought of you only,” he said, looking up at her, golden light caught in both of his eyes. “I hope you can forgive my indiscretion.”

She gasped another breath. “Why?”

His laughter was warm as the settling dusk—soft as the first twinkling of starlight in the heavens.

“The older I become,” he said gently, “The more I wish—just for a _moment_ —for something to keep to myself.” As his eyes sparkled up at her, the teal of the left became vivid scarlet. “Something of my own, nonetheless.” 

Tenderness fissured her heart. 

Her lips parted. “G’raha—”

He smiled sadly and shook his head. “I understand,” he said, though his voice trembled. Two hands touched her face. One was smooth as a gemstone. The hair that framed his jaw was suddenly frosted with stardust.

She closed her eyes and knelt at his feet. Tears tracked down her cheeks. “I never realized.”

His mouth touched her brow. “I never wanted you to realize.” His kiss was feather soft. “When you awaken, I will bid you to forget.”

“It is a dream, then,” she whispered, tilting her chin to look at him.

There was mist in his eyes. “My dream dearest and most distant.” His lips touched one cheek, and then the other. “But I have overstayed my welcome.” His tears brimmed over to pool at his chin, to fall and moisten her neck. “Rest well, my precious memory.”

Somewhere in her heart swelled the words: _Disremember, p_ _retermit._

* * *

That morning, she felt the dried paths of tears on her face.

There was a warmth, a bitter ache in her chest—a dream that crept at the edge of her awareness, just the distance to forget.

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listened to the second [Amh Araeng](https://youtu.be/WluVE7hM2yQ) theme to write this.


	5. Omnifacet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> omni-  
> prefix: all; of all things.
> 
> ✧
> 
> fac·et  
> /ˈfasət/  
> noun: one side of something many-sided, especially of a cut gem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exarch/G'raha Tia POV. Flashbacks.  
> hi, I'm completely in hell, please watch your step;

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

“G’raha Tia?”

He simpered as she tested his name on her tongue again, _tasted_ it. “The one and only,” he said, propping his weight against his bow. His tail lashed back and forth with extroverted elation, stirring the dry Mor Dhonan earth. “And you said—Samantha Rosalyn, was it?”

She wet her lips and waved her hand. “Just Samantha.” 

Beneath the frilled fringe of her long sleeve, her right palm was calloused, wrapped with a bandage. She shifted her weight between her heels. The staff at her back gleamed and glittered—the focus for her magick, no doubt. It was very impressive but covered in a film of dirt and dust. So were the knees of her thick stockings, revealed by the high-low style of her skirts.

She noticed his appraisal and crossed her arms, returning the stare. The hero of the Scions was a fierce looking woman, brimming with Highlander bloodline—and maybe something Ilsabardian, if his knowledge of anthropology sufficed. “Where do you hail from?” he asked.

“The Shroud.” Her eyes flicked down to his feet and back up again. “Sharlayan in your case, I presume?”

He nodded. “These days,” he said abstrusely. He extended his hand.

Her bandage tickled his skin as she gripped his palm firmly, sealing their introduction. “I hope your appetite for mischief has been satisfied,” she muttered, her eyes drifting to the prismatic peak of the Tower. “Because I believe we have hard work cut out for us.”

“Nothing worth doing ever came easy,” he said simply, lifting a brow. “Or without a healthy bit of romping.”

She seemed torn between a grin and a grimace. “So you say.”

* * *

“It keeps _tickling me_ ,” she groused.

Everything smelled of parchment and sweat. They were crammed together in the tent, books spread across their laps—and somehow his tailtip kept brushing her elbow. He swallowed the chuckling snort in his throat and hunched over the page he was reading, keeping his eyes fixed on the text. It was hard to pay attention when it was so easy to distract her. “My apologies.”

She huffed and tried to turn her back to him slightly—as much as their accommodations would allow. He caught a whiff of salt and roses. They _were_ uncomfortably close, pressed together like this. But he could do a better job of controlling himself. 

He pulled his tail out of the way and let it lash in the other direction. “Better?”

She scoffed and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Like trying to study beside a lolloping lion,” she grumbled.

The laugh that tore from his lips took him by surprise. “A _lolloping lion?_ ”

She stiffened. “I haven’t spent much time around people with tails,” she muttered, sounding awkward. “Not in close quarters like this.”

He was grinning so wide his cheeks ached. He kept his eyes glued down at his book. “ _Interesting_.”

“Oh gods,” she hissed. “Don’t go getting _ideas_ somehow—forget I said anything.”

He tried to twist his mouth back to relaxed, shrugging. He abandoned trying to read. “Not so much ideas as _questions_ ,” he confessed. He could feel his spine prickle with excitement, tip to tip. “And wondering about your impressions.”

She gathered her long dark hair behind her neck and turned to face him. “My impressions?”

“Of me,” he clarified, flashing his teeth.

She arched both black eyebrows, her stern angles smoothing for an instant. “Are you asking what I think of you?”

His ears flicked forward and he smiled crookedly. “That I am.”

They stared at each other for a moment. She tilted her head to gaze into his eyes. He watched as she looked from one iris to the other, searching intently, and something shifted in his chest. “I think I might _like_ you,” she boldly declared. “But,” she added quickly, “I never trust that feeling anymore.” She inspected the markings at the corners of his eyes; dipped her gaze down across his lips; examined the tattoos at his neck. She locked their stares back together. “You will have to forgive me for being cautious.”

His heart gave the strangest backflip. “By all means,” he said kindly. He pulled a strong measure of understanding to his face. “I can foresee no reason whatsoever to betray you,” he said, the honest truth. “Not to undermine your caution. I can well and fully relate.”

The hint of a grin touched her lips. “And you?” She quirked a brow. “What of your impressions?”

What _was_ this lumpen thumping of his heart? He breathed against it and wet his lips. “A strong and able woman,” he began, tracing the handsome lines of her face. “And quite the impressive academic.” He could feel the way his expression changed, the way it levelled. “Lolloping tails aside, you can scour a tome apace.”

She scoffed and snorted. “ _Enthusiastic_ is a better word,” she muttered. “I love to read. Retaining the information is another matter entirely.”

He laughed again. He wondered if his eyes were twinkling. “I have faith,” he assured her. “And—at least, I _think_ —I like you too.”

* * *

They stepped across the creaking threshold and she sighed.

“Better,” she conceded.

It was a small outpost, but two rooms were _indeed_ more accommodating than one—and wood and stone and mortar, far sturdier than raggedy canvas. G’raha heaved his bags of books onto the floor and loped to the window. The lever to open it was caked in dirt. “Rammbroes mentioned there might be a bedframe,” he grunted, cranking it wide.

The orange light of sunset streamed in. Samantha was hefting the rest of their belongings inside. She coughed and squinted, shielding her eyes against the stirring of dust. “If there is, you can have it,” she offered. She bent to dig through one of her knapsacks, pulling out a small budding wand. “I tend to fit more easily in my bedroll.”

He grinned back at her through a cloud of fine powder. “The perks of shorter stature,” he said, very jolly.

She chuckled. “I seem to recall there being very many,” she said, unironic. The small crook of wood in her hand was twined with leaves and flowers, wrapped with a small thread of beads. She waved it in a slow arc and muttered something under her breath.

A gust of wind swept through the room and out the opened window, taking all the dust with it—along with G’raha’s hair tie. He made a sound of surprise as his small braid came undone, wisps of hair crowding his face. His mouth was agape with shock and affront.

Samantha choked on a giggle. 

He could hear her start to apologize, but the sound of her laugh _did_ something to him.

He’d never heard it before. He had to hear it _again._ “Excuse me,” he razzed, pushing the hair back from his face, feeling the length of his tail flick and swish. “But did my stern and scowling companion just give a little _chortle?_ ”

She pursed her lips and turned wide eyes away from him. _Guilty._ “Let me fetch another band for your hair.”

* * *

It took them the better part of dusk to finish dusting, but by the time they were done, the place was almost _cozy_.

There was a table, bench, and chairs—a bedframe, just as Rammbroes said—a small hearth and counters besides. Samantha spread her bedroll to read there on the floor while G’raha took a rickety chair. He settled back into a dense and challenging passage on Allag.

Long moments passed in comfortable silence. When she rose to cross the room to him, the floorboards groaned. “What do you make of this?” she asked, showing him her open volume, handing him a fat strip of dried, salted meat.

He popped the jerky in his mouth and glanced at the text. Her thumb and fingertip guided his eye. He took the book from her hands and chewed, reading it over himself; swallowing to mutter some words very quietly. “Not—sure.” He pressed his lips tight together. “But I believe I might have a cross reference.”

* * *

A cycle, a routine, was established. 

Evenings spent nudging secrets out of old scripts—days spent exploring every access of the Tower. They worked to chart a passage through the Labyrinth and suffered no more nights crushed shoulder to shoulder in a tent, struggling through distraction.

But somehow—

Somehow, G’raha almost missed it.

* * *

He jerked awake at the sound of his name—at the pressure of her hand on his back. “You fell asleep,” she said softly. Her palm was very warm there, just beneath the nape of his neck.

He blinked down at the tome—his unsuspecting pillow. What could only be drool dampened a page, and he cringed at the sight of it; hoped the text was undamaged. “Forgive me,” he muttered hoarsely, not sure if he spoke it to her or to the book. He felt wetness on his chin, his lips. He wiped it away with the back of one hand and grimaced. “It was a rather _grueling_ manuscript.”

She laughed softly, and his heart stuttered.

Her hand was very gentle between his shoulder blades. “I too have been lulled by monotonous things,” she quipped, stepping back. The press of her hand went with her. “But I think your neck would thank you for a cushion.”

He took a breath to settle the sudden rush of his pulse; checked the integrity of the page as a distraction. Despite his catatonic attempt to ruin it, the lettering was intact. “How late is it?” He glanced out the window, at the night sky beyond.

She was looking, too. Stars glittered in a vast and cloudless sky. 

Tired as he was, his tail flicked at the urge to go outside.

“Clearly past your bedtime,” she said dryly.

He laughed and the ease of it stunned him yet again—such a natural reflex. G’raha turned to look at her and wondered many things. Things he never remembered needing to wonder.

He braced himself and extended his hand, hoping she found him beguiling. 

“I want to look at the heavens,” he declared. “Come with me?”

She looked at his palm and swayed on the brink. 

And then—and then she took it. 

Her grip was very firm. He let his heart race as he led her to the threshold, took them both across it. He wanted this—to touch her like this—to grasp her strong fingers in his hand. 

He never realized.

The air outside was almost balmy, unseasonably so; but the cool and thrilling breeze remained. He took a deep breath and smelled the lake and the Fogfens and a whiff of smoke from Castrum Centri. Above all else, laced in the wind, it was her he breathed in—books and candles and _magick_.

The moon was new that night, concealed behind her midnight veil. He blinked up at the limitless ocean of stars and held Samantha's palm tight. “Beautiful.”

She hummed agreement. “I love to gaze at them,” she confessed.

He never knew that.

He turned to find her staring at the sky, chin tilted full back. Her dark eyes were wide as she basked in the embrace of the night. “When I look at the stars,” she said softly, searching them intently, “It makes me feel small and alive.”

Again, in his chest, something shifted. And then he comprehended.

He felt that way standing beside her—eclipsed, somehow, by magnificence.

She took a deep breath. The eyes she used to pierce the dazzling dust of the cosmos seemed to shine. “We are so very small, G’raha,” she said, and though her voice was frail, it was also full to bursting. “Nothing but flickers in time, grains of sand so tiny. And yet—”

She turned to him and smiled.

It took him off-guard, to be pinned by the force of that smile. It made him feel like he shouldn’t be watching.

Blood rushed to his cheeks as she turned to face him, to gift him that clandestine grin. His pulse stammered to catch in his throat. “Here we are regardless,” she told him, stealing his air. “Fiercely living.” 

His fingers gripped her hand like a vise. He could feel the vaguest prickling of tears; a flame at the back of his mind; a crush of something wild and wayward and utterly _uninvited_.

In the expanse of that instant he imagined many things. Pulling her flush to his body. Pressing his nose to her neck. Brushing lips against the shoulder bared by the slouch of her vestment. He wanted to kiss her mouth and her _eyes_ ; to say she speared him like one of his arrows.

Her stare left him transfixed; pricked to the quick of his marrow, the bottommost crux of his heart.

He felt it—untamed and alive. And he wanted to be trapped in her gravity, blinded by every iota of her brilliance. But as he watched her, his heart refracting a chorus of facets—

The only thing he thought to do was smile.

* * *

Was it wrong—to feel this way?

In four and twenty winters, there had been others; those that stirred him in scarce and unusual ways. But this was the first time it felt so decisive, _unbending_ —and fully indifferent to timing. 

They were also stuck _together_. They shared space unguarded; mealtimes and wakings and sleepings, all unavoidably by her side. It was torture. Surely, she could _see_ it, the way he newly saw her— _hear_ it, the way his body hummed beneath her eyes.

If she did, she never said so. In a way, it was almost consolation.

G’raha Tia was not a coward—never one to back down from a challenge.

But she made him feel wary; made him question the future, the lean of his aim.

He wanted her to notice, but _didn’t_. He wanted to tell her but felt, almost, _afraid_. And so he settled, instead, for coaxing that smile; making her laugh whenever he was able. It was often, he realized. Often enough to keep the spark in his heart burning full bright. 

* * *

“Can I ask you a question?”

This was a game they liked to play, and it was he who dared to wonder. 

She turned to blink at him and answer. They were finishing the last remnants of dinner—grilled bass with foraged vegetables—and gazing at the stars, that most treasured leisure. He took a breath and stared at the moon’s hairline crescent. “What made you decide—to adventure?”

For almost too long, she was quiet. He tilted his chin to fix her with his eyes—found her hugging her knees very slightly. “I like to say I ran away,” she began. Then she stopped and adjusted. “I don’t _like_ to say it,” she muttered, looking at the scraps on her plate. “I say it more because—that’s what it felt like.”

He hunched up to lean on his thighs, ignoring his sticky fingers. His tail lashed against the ground. “Why?”

Her chest rose and fell with a heavy exhalation. She tilted her face back to the stars. “I know we make a game of answering questions,” she murmured. “But will you forgive me if I make an exception?”

His heart wrung tight with regret for asking. “Of course. I apologize.”

“Don’t.” She said it fast. The eyes she turned back to him were burning. “It’s my own private burden,” she explained. “Mine alone to bear. I hope you can understand.”

His right eye itched with exactly that. “When it comes to private burdens,” he said conspiratorially, full of his own implications, “I am something of an expert.”

That made her laugh and _oh_ , his heart fluttered. “Do tell,” she invited.

His ribs felt too tight. 

_Now. You could say it._

_You could and you should._

His blood was singing loudly in his ears, his pulse a ragged beat. He leaned back on the heels of his palms and wet his lips. “My forebears hail from Ilsabard,” he decided to say, a separate admission in lieu of what he wanted. “With some—narrative of connection to Allag.” He turned his eyes to the tip of the Tower, gleaming in the starlight. “I went to Sharlayan to study those annals—to become a worthy historian, that I might uncover our origin.” He closed his eyes. 

It was not the confession he desired to make.

Still, somehow, it left her astonished—made her follow with a pause. 

He turned to find her watching him, thinking deeply. The next breath she took was very stiff. “My father is Ilsabardian,” she said, something tense behind her stare. Her words rang sharp in the air, as though they left a tang in her mouth. “He—also has a narrative.”

G’raha hummed and chuckled, eager to distract himself from the heat of her attention. “As do we all—else I made a very poor choice of vocation.”

She laughed suddenly, somewhere between the crowing of birds and a howl. It was a raw, wonderful sound. “Poor choice or not,” she said, something very measured in her eyes, “It appears to have led us together.”

The air was thin. His chest was rising faster. 

_Say it now, you fool of a scholar._

His tail lashed again. “I am glad for that."

* * *

The subtle creak of the floorboards woke him, and he gasped to jerk upright. His bow was in his hands before his mind thought up a reaction, and she hushed a breath through her lips. “It’s me,” she whispered, gripping his wrist very gently.

His sinews began to untense, but the touch of her fingers stirred his pulse into a symphony. In the dim blur of his vision, she appeared haloed in starlight—dressed in long nightclothes, her face drawn and tired.

He sank back again to tilt his bow by the bedframe, rubbing his eyes. “Is aught amiss?”

The cushion of his bedroll shifted as she sat on the edge of it. He could feel some modicum of her warmth through the blankets and he shivered. “I—was having trouble sleeping.”

She was often sleepless, eluded by rest in the night. It came to him only a fraction more often. 

Still, this was a first. He gulped down the lump in his very dry throat, and tried to think of something, _anything_ to say. “Might I assist?”

She hugged her arms around her waist and took a shaky breath. “If—it isn’t improper,” she muttered. “Could I join you?”

The lump in his throat was back twelvefold. “Highly improper,” he rasped, grasping at straws to make her laugh. “But your sense of propriety has always been— _flexible_.” 

It worked. She chuckled. It sounded dry, too. “As long as you don’t mind.”

He shook his head. Heavy and self-conscious, he tugged his tail out of the way and made room in the pallet for her to join him. She bent her knees to slip slowly beneath the blankets—agonizingly so. Every movement stirred the smell of her, mixed and blended with _his_. It bid heat to pool low in his belly and he tensed against it.

Something cold touched his ankles and he flinched and hissed, blindingly glad for the distraction. “Your toes are like _ice_.”

She huffed another laugh and pulled the blankets up to her chin. “Sorry.”

He grunted, readjusting. “Regretting my decision,” he lied. He closed his eyes and relished the feeling of her there beside him—the warmth of her limbs, the scent of her hair. With the heat of two bodies, the pallet was cozy. Against his will, he began to fade back into a dream.

“Can I ask you a question?”

His ears perked and he woke by a margin, leaning his head on the pillow to face her. “Always.”

She was studying the ceiling, cocooned to the lips in bedsheets. Despite the body heat between them, she shivered. Her words were muted by fabric. “What do you suppose will happen after?”

Dreadfully curious, he shifted his weight to turn on one side; propped himself up on one shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“After we explore it,” she muttered. “The Tower, I mean.” She turned to look at him, sinking into the edge of his pillow—tugged down the bedsheets to unmuffle her mouth. “Will you—stay?”

Involuntary, his tail flicked with enough force to make a thump. Her eyes widened at the sound and he coughed. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “Sometimes—” He cleared his throat. “If the sentiment is strong enough, my spine gains a mind all its own.”

That made her bark a laugh. In the dimness, her eyes sparkled. “Does that mean you want to?”

His heart was pounding, too loudly. “Stay?”

She nodded. “You could join me for adventures,” she was saying, and his blood was percussion in his ears. “I could use someone good with tomes and arrows.”

His mind, his soul, was _soaring_. He imagined a thousand things at once and tried to steady himself. “I would love to join the narrative.”

Something cold jammed into his leg. Her _toes._ He sucked a breath through his teeth as she lectured, “You were already part of it. But if you stay—we could write some more together.”

Nothing in life could ever be greater. 

His thoughts roamed across the horizon and he grinned a private grin. “We could travel the lands,” he proposed. “Cross the _seas_.” He fixed her with eyes that surely gleamed. “Take to the skies upon the eternal wind.” His heart felt very full. “We could uncover so much _history_ together,” he murmured, his pulse a potent purr in his chest. His tail flicked again. “Oh, how happy that would make me.”

Beneath the covers, her hand reached to find his.

Every fiber of his existence narrowed to that point of contact. 

“Stay, then,” she begged. “We can face the future together.”

* * *

_The future is where my destiny awaits._

* * *

The memories dragged at his heart before fading.

He took a deep breath, and the glittering light in the Ocular shuddered. This morning, she would leave him—return to their homeland, now a part of his tender antiquity. How many years had come and gone since that season, those young and gentle days? They echoed in his mind like the lilt of a haunting refrain; the petals of one ephemeral flower, doomed to fade.

Even now, his purpose fulfilled, he felt gripped at the scruff by it—the stiff and miserly palm of chronos, compelling his destiny. A fresh-faced kit lovestruck by a hero made one gallant decision, and set to motion a ticking, complex system. 

In another time, in another passing of the ages, did G’raha Tia choose another path?

Could he have protected her then?

He closed his eyes.

He wrote her back into the narrative—brought everything toppling in—lived the adventure he dreamed of beside her, but so darkly, capriciously different. And yet here he was, the thread of him still bound by her gravity, tied through the fabric of all that exists.

A sibylline smile tickled his lips. 

“Would that I could will _myself_ to disremember,” he murmured, his voice a quiet resonance.

But he could never, ever bear to forget.

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Includes specific retelling of scenes included in Chapter 5, ["Immemorial,"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19976539/chapters/47330335) of my other story, Xenoglossy.


	6. Fracture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There, staring at the Tower where it cut through the haze of Mor Dhona, he confessed his earnest fears, the answers he hunted of his inheritance—revealed the bearing they held on his destiny, and his deepest, darkest instincts. Half of them, at least.
> 
> ["The more I learn of the Crystal Tower, the less I am myself."](https://lumikatdraws.tumblr.com/post/186747559628/the-more-i-learn-of-the-crystal-tower-the-less-i)
> 
> ✧
> 
> For a man of his age, this was incredibly unbecoming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exarch/G'raha Tia POV. Link in quote above takes you to one of my drawings.  
> Unapologetic use of in-game quotes. Flashbacks with some explicit daydreams.  
> or, the hell in which I dwell grows deeper and much less forgiving; my soul cannot be saved;

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

When he was a boy, many long years ago, he yearned to stand tall as the heroes of eld. 

But like a fool seeking to pluck the stars from the heavens, his every attempt to reprise their deeds fell short. And then, one day, an all but forgotten dream from his youth stood before him, in the flesh.

A hero who looked to the horizon and beyond, and saw he knew not what. 

She stepped up to the dais, his mortal idol of blood and bone—stopped to pause beside him. In that moment, all he knew was that he would give _anything_ to stand at her side.

Even so. 

He beckoned her across with his hand—his left palm that yearned, everlastingly, to touch her.

Was it his imagination? Or did her dark eyes also glimmer with wishes untold?

When she spoke, her voice was frail. “Did I ever tell you before—how much I hate goodbyes?”

His lips parted to take a breath and he forced a thin smile. “One thing more we have in common,” he said, pinioned by the force of her stare. He willed the Tower not to quake as he looked up at her.

She pressed her heels to the floor. There was torment in her eyes—tension in her solemn grin. He wondered why. “Among many others,” she said, offering no further answers. He watched as she swallowed, burying some measure of her words, perhaps. “Until the next time, then, my old friend.”

It almost sounded like a promise.

His pulse stammered. His ragged chest was wrung of air. He felt the briefest prickle of tears, but held his composure. “Until then,” he said, breathless, a blaze behind his eyes.

When she passed, he smelled the faintest hush of roses. 

In the expanse of that instant he imagined many things. Capturing her fingers in his. Trapping her tight to his body. Ensnaring her mouth with his lips. He wanted to cage her, to enmesh them together—to beg her to remain in the Tower, where he could adore her forever.

She looked back at him, framed by the scintillant portal, and her stare cut him through—pierced flesh and fissured crystal alike. Along that fracture, something burned; awakening an ache in his marrow.

He felt alive and untamed; yearned to chase her gravity—blinded by every iota of her brilliance.

But as he watched her, his heart refracting a refrain of unfathomable facets—

The only thing he thought to do was smile.

She crossed over, and was gone.

He took a breath that filled every ilm of his lungs. Then he trailed in her footsteps. The portal loomed above him and he swayed in her shadow—reached his left hand to touch the humming surface. The Tower trembled and repulsed him, a spark of levin shocking his skin. “Would that it were so easy,” he lamented. 

He lifted hot eyes as though to cleave through to the Source—as though to keep watching with his wild, careful stare. “The glory of the heavens was ever beyond the grasp of those who never thought to reach for it,” he muttered, thinking only of her starlight. “But if I have gained anything from all of this, it is the courage to stretch out my hand.”

If he could not usher this body back through the rift—

“Do you hear me, G'raha Tia?” He grinned, and bittersweet tears tracked down his face. “This is no time for sleeping!”

* * *

It was afternoon or evening thereafter, or maybe much later. 

Time, for him, was immaterial.

The man who lived one with the Tower sat inside it, alone in his study, consumed by his memories.

It was not grief. Not truly. More a sense of tender nostalgia, blended with velvet melancholy. Well did he remember the last time they parted—the terrors and triumphs that led to that farewell. 

But what of the final instants slipped between? Dare he think back to stolen moments by her side—a different sort of ending—the Labyrinth conquered, Syrcus Tower scaled, the throne of Xande recovered?

He took a breath against the stiffness in his chest, and dove back into the catacombs. 

The barest shred of darkness wept against the sky, a hideous rippling banner. The void; that last lingering threat. Unei revealed to them her wisdom—the need to sequester the tower, to _seal_ it. That, or somehow cripple its everlasting power.

By the blood of Allag it was begun. By the blood of Allag would it be ended.

But she and Doga failed. They could not annul the covenant—could not avert the void from roaring open. The empress of darkness herself called through it, promising their destruction. The voidsent would consume all that was, feeding on their rich and plentiful aether.

The Exarch pressed glittering fingers to his lips and closed his eyes. 

The Void. So like the Light. So like to the Eaters and the Flood.

In the gaze of his memory, the portal split open again, the pair’s purpose interrupted. Samantha crumpled to the ground with a vision of the Echo. He loosed his arrows to protect her, to slay the creatures that spilled from the rift—before his right eye gripped him. Pain. Searing memories. He bore down against them and, in so doing, failed to save Doga and Unei from the grasp of the darkness.

To him, Samantha recalled her dream in detail. Xande, the ancient emperor—the second-lived king—he who cheated death but could never overcome it. So consumed was he with rage and fear and _nothing_ that, in turn, to match his unending despair, he would consume the world with nothing.

G'raha begged her for a moment of his own—to tell her the truth of his eye.

There, staring at the Tower where it cut through the haze of Mor Dhona, he confessed his earnest fears, the answers he hunted of his inheritance—revealed the bearing they held on his destiny, and his deepest, darkest instincts. 

Half of them, at least.

“The more I learn of the Crystal Tower, the less I am myself.”

He told her how he felt consumed with remembering—remembering something ancient, and ever so important. He implored her to take him with her through the rift, to discover the hidden truth of history.

He would see this journey— _their_ journey—through to the end with his own two eyes.

“Before we do this, G’raha,” she accepted, gazing at the mammoth spire of crystal on the horizon. “Let us rest.”

* * *

“Are you finished?”

The last scraps of his meal were left on his plate. He lifted his eyes to her and nodded, felt a timid smile spread across his lips. “All but the tea.”

She grinned back at him. “No rush.”

_Seven hells._

_Tell her._

_Tell her before it is somehow too late._

She reached to leave his mug and take his plate, to wash and return it to the mess kit. He took a sip of tea and listened as she did so, turning back to his book—watched from the corner of his eye as she moved back to her nook of the outpost. Through the arch that split the two makeshift rooms, he could see her begin undressing for bed.

He stared hard at the text on the page even though it swam together—even though it was naught but a blur against the tumult in his mind.

How many ways could the next moment fracture—splitting off into fractals?

_He finishes his tea and she picks up the empty cup. He closes his book, clears his throat, and she looks down at him in question. “There is something more,” he says. She stands there holding the mug, holding his stare with curious attention, and he wets his lips. “I—I think I might love you.” The cup falls from her hands, hits the floor with a dull, ringing note; she kneels to pick it up and lifts her eyes to search him—_

Weak. 

The page unblurred and he shook himself out of the daydream—glanced back in her direction. Robed only in smallclothes and stockings, she scowled and yanked a long nightgown from her bags, shaking it out to the floor. He looked away again, blood in his cheeks, hot iron in his throat.

This time, he closed his eyes.

_She reaches for the mug, but he stops her—grips her hand instead. “Wait.” As she watches, he takes a stand; braces both of his heels against the floor. “I have something I must tell you.” He is a full head shorter, but his hands press to fit at her waist, gentle and assured. He buries his nose in the crook of her neck, to breathe deep of her scent. Oh, how good she smells. The words that push past his lips are hot, laced with longing. “I have fallen in love with you,” he whispers, tasting her skin—_

He grimaced. 

Not _enough_. Not _nearly_ strong enough.

He swallowed hard and his pulse began to race—shifted his weight against his chair.

_Her hand starts reaching and he snatches her wrist—pulls to bend her down to his lips. He locks eyes with her. “Kiss me,” he demands. She laughs breathlessly—thinks him in jest._

_She asks him why, and he tells her. “Because I love you.”_

_There is a moment where the air is gone from the room. Nothing exists but the force of their stare. They are locked together in time, endlessly searching._ _Then he feels the warmth of her breath on his chin. Her lips part to obey him, capturing his._

_He opens his mouth. Stardust scatters behind his eyes as he tastes her. He takes a ragged breath and tastes her again and again; drags the flats of their tongues full together. He wants to be twined—to swallow his name from her throat—to savor the scent of her soul—to be all she requires without and within._

_She breaks from the kiss to tangle her hands in his hair. He arches back and gasps for breath._

_He traps her in his arms and tugs her chest to his face; presses his nose and lips between her breasts; lifts his chin to pin her with hungering eyes. His hands spread to rake down her back, to the uppermost slope of her thighs, where her stockings meet the give of warm flesh. He hooks his fingertips under her garters and sinks greedy palms on her skin, urging her to crouch, to mount him on the chair._

_She submits. Her legs part to straddle his hips, and he gasps a rough breath. His hips jerk in base instinct and he groans; kisses her like a man famished. His book falls to the floor; he says something wanton. He holds her caged flush against him, pinned as his hips flex up and up. Her breath and his heart pant in time to that rhythm—intent and insistent. Her eyes go dark and hollow with wanting._

_Her feet catch at the legs of his chair as she twists down against him, the friction making him frisson. Her lips part in a silent moan. His name is plucked like a string in her mouth, hot and hitched. “Raha.”_

_The sound makes him see red. The blood inside him shouts with something savage. His hand slips between her legs to touch her, a compulsion; she gasps and spreads herself wider. He cups with his first two fingers and, even in his mind, he pauses. “Should I stop?”_

_“No,” she begs him. “Keep going.”_

_He eases the front of her smalls to one side and hooks both fingers inside her, curling slowly. Her warmth, the way she grips him, pulls him in. The whine that escapes her throat makes him feel like he might rip apart. He cannot take it. He wants to be buried, to be lost in hot descent. He struggles to unbuckle his trousers and chokes on his request. “Let me be inside you.”_

_She takes the front of his belt and pushes it down; sets him free where he strains for release. The air is cold on his burning, aching flesh, but the heat of her returns. She looks down with naked longing, desire for him and his body. He wants her to look at him like that forever._

_He can feel the fringe of her smalls as she takes him in her hand—strokes the peak of him along the valley of her. A cry of bliss gutters in his throat and she guides him to the threshold; down, there, where he wants so badly to enter. A nudge, just a by a whisper. He tries not to hiss as he hilts himself deep._

_The chair creaks. He crushes his palms at her hips; sinks his teeth into her neck. They lunge and topple to tangle on the floor. He leaves marks on her throat, her neckline, her chest. Her hands grip the legs of the table; her thighs press him tight. The latch of his belt scrapes a steady tempo on the floor. There is only the drumming of skin on skin, heavy breathing, half-swallowed cries. She pants to the low music of his frantic, whispered vows—_

* * *

The sound of a knock and Lyna’s voice tore him clean out of the vision. 

He almost jumped out of his skin. “My lord,” she was saying through the door. “I am come to enquire after you.” A pause. “Are you well? You have been sequestered for most of the evening."

His lips were very dry, every hair of his body on end; but for a relief, his voice was smooth and even. “I am well,” he assured her, breathing through his nose. “Thank you for checking on me.”

There was another, longer pause—one he used to seek composure. Furtively he adjusted himself beneath his layers and swallowed hard against the electric rush of blood still pulsing through his body. 

_Heavens._ For a man of his age, this was incredibly unbecoming.

Lyna spoke again. “Shall I go? Or tell the others to await you at the Mean?”

A nightly survey per their custom. He took a shaky breath. “Go on,” he implored her. “I shall join them ere long.”

He listened to her footsteps retreat. Then he dragged the glittering edges of his right hand down his face, shuddering hard enough to make the Tower do the same. For nigh on centuries, he never allowed himself to remember; to think of the way he yearned for that joining. In the end, he was joined to fate instead—fate, and the crux of the Tower.

Bearing witness to brave deeds, his mind was set against mortal wishes; his destiny, besides. The blood that raced in his veins allowed him to govern the legacy of Allag, and that was of ageless importance. He would mold it, preserve it; become a vessel immemorial for an ancient curse and blessing, preventing its loss to time.

And so, he slumbered. He waited for those with the means to open the gates. And when they woke him, he guided them—charting his course by her long faded star. And then, he had done it—saved her life, and granted his forebears greatest wish. The Tower was a beacon of hope yet again. The Crystarium sang to prove it, unearthly in its splendor.

She was passed beyond the rift. Her thread pulled her far, to a future that was hers to recreate—where hope should reign supreme, and the tragedies of the past should become but faintest memory.

Again, they were unjoined—and yet he felt her magnetic attraction, the gravity of their double star.

And _yet_.

Even from beyond—worlds and timelines apart—his body felt dragged to her, bore the smoldering ashes of an earthly, finite desire he still, somehow, wanted.

_If only I could have been part of your journeys longer—_

The last whims of his flesh and bone aside—

_Until the next time, then, my old friend._

Until then, he could sustain himself on wishes.

He was terribly good at wishing, after all.

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include final cutscenes of Shadowbringers, and cutscenes of the Crystal Tower questlines, specifically those surrounding the completion of Syrcus Tower and unlocking the World of Darkness. I listened to a lot of Doga & Unei's Theme, ["Now I know the Truth,"](https://youtu.be/a9HEvbEvglI) which also happens to be the theme that plays in the Ocular. Bonus: Clicking on that link has a lot of super cute G'raha face for your enjoyment.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> If you enjoyed anything in particular, have a prompt for me to explore, or otherwise wish to critique my work, please leave me a comment!
> 
> I'm very friendly and I thrive on feedback!


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